Crushed
by Kayasuri-n
Summary: It was a feeling of ribs cracking, flesh bruising and twisting and breath rushing out of the lungs and being unable to take another breath... Really, it would have been easier if he could just hate his trainer.


**CRUSHED**

He didn't love his trainer.

He supposed if the trainer ever found out, the trainer would be hurt, confused certainly, but mostly hurt. Maybe even crushed… He found that funny, in an ironic, self-deprecating way. _Crushed_… The trainer would never know what it was like to be crushed, to feel ribs snapping under the pressure, flesh bruising and twisting and breath rushing from lungs and being unable to take another breath… But then he'd forget what was so funny and go back to sitting like a good little pet at the trainer's feet.

He didn't love his trainer. He didn't even _like_ his trainer.

He hated his trainer.

"You're my best friend," the human would say. And then, the very next minute (it seemed) he was tossed out into battle. And his 'best friend' would be screaming orders and insults as he fought.

"Dodge left! No, left you stupid beast, left!"

So he'd dodge left, as ordered. He'd leap forward for a tackle, as ordered. He'd get bruised and beaten and bloody. Sometimes he'd win the fight. Sometimes he was knocked out.

Knocked out… the trainer probably didn't even know what _that_ was like. How the darkness spread from behind, but not everywhere at once. First you couldn't see. Then you couldn't smell, or taste, or feel. Hearing went last. Always, hearing went last. Sometimes he'd hear a noise- a cough, a word, once a freaking laugh- and that would be the last thing he'd hear.

It had been his trainer that had laughed.

He really, really hated his trainer.

He hated the way the trainer would claim to have won the battles. The trainer hadn't. The trainer had been standing on the sidelines, cheering and ordering and screaming when required. The trainer hadn't been in the arena. _He'd_ been in the arena. He'd had the fire flung at his face or the water slamming into his side like a battering ram. He'd been the one who'd been thrown to the ground and who had gotten up even when he'd thought it impossible. He'd broken his leg, and all for a human who he hated.

No, not hate. It went deeper then hate.

He _despised_ the human child.

He wondered, sometimes, _what_ would happen if his trainer found out. Other trainers knew. They'd ask his trainer why he was kept. "You can see it in its eyes. It just hates you. You should get rid of it."

"No, no. It's been with me since the beginning, I couldn't get rid of it."

It. _It._ He was just an _it_ to his trainer. So. If his trainer ever found out, what would be done? Would he be abandoned at the side of the road, the trainer thinking that as a pokemon he'd know how to survive? Never mind he'd been hand raised by humans. Never mind that, before becoming a battler he'd spent a pampered life with everything he wanted given to him.

Or maybe his trainer would kill him. The trainers were taught they didn't kill. His trainer would never go down that route… but he wasn't so sure. If there was one thing life as a battler had proven to him was that trainers would do anything, _anything_, to get what they wanted. If his trainer wanted to be rid of him… then he could very well die.

He was kept out of the pokeball more then any other pokemon on the team. He wasn't sure which was better; the timeless nothing broken up by brief spurts of battle, or seeing the trainer almost every day. Both seemed horrible, to him.

Not that he had a choice, of course.

He didn't despise his trainer. He didn't even hate the boy.

"Is something wrong? Are you hurt or something?"

He looked away. His trainer could wonder, but he would never, ever tell the trainer the truth. How could he? Who knew what would happen then?

His trainer would probably be crushed, he very well knew. Crushed- when the trainer didn't even know what being crushed was really like. Only he knew that. Only he knew…

After the shock, after the confusion, after the moment of mind-numbing understanding… what then?

_What then?_

He didn't know. He didn't want to find out.

"Come on, you can tell me. You're my friend, friends _always_ trust each other."

Really, it would have been so much simpler if he could just _hate_ his trainer. Hate everything about him. Hate that the trainer, the boy, was so young and naïve. He wished… well, he wished he was able to hate even the trainer's hair, how it always flopped down into the boy's eyes when he walked.

He turned his head so fast he was surprised there wasn't a whip crack.

"_I hate you,"_ he hissed.

Really, it would have been so much simpler if he could just hate his trainer.

The expression froze on his trainer's face. Yes, there was the shock. Surprise in the widening eyes, in the mouth parting slightly.

And then came the confusion. "W-what did you say?"

But he couldn't hate him, really…

"_I said I hated you. No… I despise you."_

But he didn't, really. It would have been so much simpler if he just hated the trainer… instead of also loving the boy.

It was impossible to tell the two apart, now; the trainer, greed and adventure and criticism, and the boy, smiles and stories and hugs when the thunder frightened them both.

He hated the trainer. He loved the boy.

They were one and the same, and wasn't that complicated?

…Somehow, he thought, the boy knew what it felt like, to have your breath squeezed from your lungs…

As he'd thought all along, the boy was crushed.


End file.
